TEA grant to School of Social Work Will take innovative discipline program statewide

School and district administrators across Texas will be offered training in Restorative Discipline, an alternative to “zero tolerance” methods, through a grant from the Texas Education Agency to the Institute for Restorative Justice and Restorative Dialogue (IRJRD) at The University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work.

Restorative Discipline is a prevention-oriented approach that fosters accountability and amends-making to resolve school conflict such as bullying, truancy and disruptive behavior. The $521,000 grant will be used to conduct training sessions in Restorative Discipline in 10 Education Service Centers, which provide support to school districts and charter schools throughout the state....

Julie and Anthony’s story

After Anthony, 15, lost his temper during a game of football and assaulted another boy, he was offered the chance to take part in a restorative justice conference. Here, Anthony and his mum Julie explain how it helped them to move on from the incident and deal with his behaviour.

Anthony: I was playing football and there was a lad there called Ben*. He had come out with me and my friends a few times before but I didn't really know him well. During the game I thought that Ben had kicked me but he hadn't really done anything. I got really angry. I just lost it for no reason whatsoever. After the game as he was walking off I chased after him and as he turned around I hit him in the face and cut his eye open. After that I just ran home....

East Timor’s ‘Poet Warrior’ steps down

Gusmao joined Fretilin, the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, in 1975. For a week of that year the country was independent as the Portuguese exited their former colony. Days later, in a revolving door of occupation, Indonesia invaded. So began nearly a quarter of a century of violence and rebellion....

Winning the presidency in a landslide in 2002, Gusmao negotiated the country’s post-conflict factional violence and sought stability as prime minister from 2007 to 2012 under president Jose Ramos-Horta and his successor Rauk.

Restorative justice has unanticipated results

Imagine this scenario: the sound of shattering glass echoes through your condo building as you watch two boisterous teenagers bolt down your street. Much later, after you've helped to clean up the mess and cut your hand on the shard-crusted baseball launched through a lobby window, you're asked to participate in a Restorative Justice Victim-Offender Family Conferencing Program. Your local police department wants you to face the troublemakers and help create a plan to address their behavior. Would you do it?

How restorative justice changed a grieving family’s opinion of a hit-and-run driver

There was no ambiguity in how Coral Forslund felt when the man responsible for her sister’s hit-and-run death was finally sentenced to prison.

She “hated him.”....

But nagged by lingering questions — namely, was he remorseful for what he did? — Forslund, of Langley, B.C., reached out to a little-known federal program called Restorative Opportunities that arranges meetings between victims and offenders after sentencing. During their session in a B.C. prison, the offender broke down and Forslund heard him say for the first time that he was sorry.